The Nombre de Dios Mission Sites

Excavations
underway at the Fountain of Youth Park burial ground, 1934 (Courtesy
of the Fraser family and the Fountain of Youth Park, Inc.)

Mural
by Hollis Holbrook, ca. 1953. Exhibit Hall, Fountain of Youth Park (Courtesy
of the Fraser family and the Fountain of Youth Park, Inc.)

Indian
council house replica erected over burial structure in 1934-35 (Courtesy
of the Fraser family and the Fountain of Youth Park, Inc.)

Locations
of defense lines in St. Augustine ca. 1764

After the Seloy-Menéndez fort and town were moved to Anastasia
Island in 1566, the area around the Fountain of Youth Park remained a Timucua
settlement. Despite the presence of the Spanish blockhouse “at San
Agustín el Viejo”, relations between the Timucua and the Spanish
continued to be hostile until at least the early 1570's. Efforts to convert
the Timucua to Christianity began in the vicinity of the former Spanish
settlement after 1577, when the first Franciscan friars arrived in Florida.
A number of Timucua were baptized, including the Cacica (Chieftainess)
of the town of Nombre de Dios, the name given to the Native American
town just north of the Spanish city. These first Christian Indians attended
Mass in the town of St. Augustine until after 1587, when the first Franciscan
mission doctrina, was established at the Nombre de Dios, and
was given the same name. Franciscan friar Antonio de Escobedo
was assigned there, and helped build the first Nombre de Dios mission church.

In 1934, a gardener who was planting orange trees on the grounds of
the Fountain of Youth Park discovered human burials, laid out in the Christian
fashion. The owner of the site, Walter B. Fraser, contacted the Smithsonian
Institution, and archaeologist J. Ray Dickson subsequently conducted extensive
excavations there. Archaeological work since 1934 has shown that the initial
site of the Nombre de Dios mission church was in the southwestern section
of what is today the Fountain of Youth Park, about 165 meters southwest
of the Menendez settlement area.

Dickson located more than 100 burials (for a description and report
of that work, see Seaberg, Lillian (1951) Report on the Indian Site at
the "Fountain of Youth". Ms. on file, Florida State Museum,
University of Florida, Gainesville. (Reprinted in Spanish St. Augustine:
A Sourcebook for America's Ancient City. edited by K. Deagan. 1991,
Garland Press.). They were nearly all interred in a traditional
Christian pattern, extended with their faces toward the east. Some intruded
upon others. The Christian burial ground was placed on the site of an
earlier Timucua village midden, but the materials associated with the
burials (mostly glass beads) dated to the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

The burials were thought to be inside a late sixteenth century or early
seventeenth century Catholic church because of the tightly compacted arrangement
of the graves, their highly consistent orientation and burial position,
and the intrusion of some burials on earlier (Christian) burials. This
pattern of Native American burial within the mission church has been well-documented
in Spanish Franciscan mission sites throughout Florida (see
for example).

Another group of burials was uncovered by University of Florida student
Paul Hahn in 1953, located about 20 meters to the south of the group discovered
in 1934. These were also Christian interments, however they were buried
facing north, unlike the first group of Christian burials excavated by
Dickson, which were facing east. Extensive systematic shovel tests throughout
the property have failed to locate evidence for any burials between the
two groups.

The presence of two early historic-period, adjacent Christian burial
areas with different burial orientations is unusual. The normal practice
in Catholic burial was to place burials with their feet toward the altar
of the church (that is, with faces looking toward the altar). If the eastward-facing
burials excavated by Dickson were, in fact, inside the church, it might
indicate that the burials recorded by Hahn may have been in a cemetery
outside and south of the church, buried with their feet toward the church
to the north (faces looking north toward the church). Alternatively, the
two groups of burials could also reflect the movement and rebuilding of
the mission church in a different position during the seventeenth century.

Archaeological testing has also shown that the Timucua village associated
with the early Nombre de Dios Mission was located around the church, extending
in all directions. The densest early seventeenth century occupation located
so far is in the southwestern portion of what is today the Fountain of
Youth Park, and in the properties immediately south and west of those modern
boundaries. Sub surface surveys indicated that the Nombre de Dios settlement
extended southward along the waterfront, across what is today Ocean Avenue,
and into the grounds of the Shrine of Nuestra Señora de La Leche.
Excavations by St. Augustine’s City Archaeologist, Carl Halbirt,
have also located concentrations of 17th century remains extending to the
west of the Fountain of Youth Park between Magnolia St. and San Marcos
Avenue.

The center of the mission village moved gradually over the years toward
the south, and archaeological data indicates that by the middle of the
seventeenth century, the major mission village occupation was located on
the grounds of what is today the Nuestra Senora de la Leche Shrine, and
Catholic Mission of Nombre de Dios. This relocation possibly corresponds
to a major smallpox epidemic in 1654-55, which was reported to have virtually
wiped out the population of Nombre de Dios.

During the seventeenth century, probably after the epidemic, the Mission
of Nombre de Dios also became the site of the Shrine of Nuestra Señora
de la Leche y Buen Parto (Our Lady of the Milk and Safe Delivery),
who was represented by a venerated statue from Spain. The shrine
was the focus of much devotion among Catholics, and women in particular,
and drew substantial offerings and alms. In 1687 St. Augustine Governor
Hita y Salazar was the head of the confraternity (a lay religious organization
devoted to good works) at Nombre de Dios, and he built a stone and masonry
church in which to house the image.

The church was burned in 1702 by the English and Indian forces of South
Carolinian Colonel James Moore, who laid unsuccessful siege to St. Augustine
in that year. As a consequence, the intermediate defense line for St. Augustine
(called the hornabeque line) was constructed of logs and earth,
with a small bastion or lunette placed at the village of Nombre de Dios. By
1706, all of the Native Mission villages had been moved inside (south of)
the ornabeque line to provide better protection for their inhabitants.
(Hann, 302) The church of La Leche was rebuilt, again of stone.

The end came for the Nombre de Dios stone church in 1728, at the hands
of Col. James Palmer, another British raider who attacked St. Augustine
with a force of Yamasee and English soldiers, and ravaged the church and
settlement at Nombre de Dios before retreating.

After the Palmer raid, the governor of St. Augustine commanded that the
Church and buildings at Nombre de Dios be dismantled.

Life at the Mission

Detail
of the ca. 1593 Mestas map of St. Augustine, showing buildings at the
Nombre de Dios mission pueblo

St.
Johns pottery, the traditional ceramics of the Timucua native to St.
Augustine

San
Marcos pottery, the traditional ceramics of the Guale people who migrated
to St. Augustine

The people who lived at the village of Nombre de Dios were in closer
contact with Europeans than any other Native American group in all of Florida.
The Timucuans of St. Augustine were not only the first to confront and
resist Spanish arrival, but they were also the first to confront and suffer
from European diseases on a continuous scale. The first decade of coexistence
(1565-1575) undoubtedly reduced the Timucua population of the St. Augustine
region dramatically, and this reduction was probably a major factor in
the ability (and decision) of the Spaniards to relocate St. Augustine in
1572 from Anastasia Island to its present site on the mainland.

The generation of Timucuans born during the 1560’s reached adulthood
in the 1580’s, which was when missionary efforts in St. Augustine
realized their first successes. Success was aided by the cooperation of
the Timucuan caciques (chiefs), who appear to have quickly recognized the
advantages of Spanish alliance.

Doña
Maria Melendez, a member of the Timucuan noble class, is an example.
She was the Chieftainess (cacica) of the Timucuan town of Nombre
de Dios during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Doña
Maria was a Christian, and her mother (who had been the ruling Chief of
Nombre de Dios before her) was one of the very early Timucua converts
to Christianity. Doña Maria married a Spanish soldier named Clemente
de Vernal, and he lived with her and their children at Nombre de Dios.
By 1606 she had become the ruler of the Timucuan tribes extending along
the coast between St. Augustine and approximately Cumberland Island, Georgia
, possibly through Spanish intervention.

Spanish mission activity also began very early among the Guale people
of the coastal region of Georgia, and this provoked increasing movement
of the Guale into Florida. The arrival of this new American Indian group
may have had even greater impacts on life at Nombre de Dios than the Spaniards
did. The Timucua people around St. Augustine, whose traditional pottery
is known to archaeologists as the St. Johns series, began to use the traditional
San Marcos pottery of the Guale as well as their own St. Johns pottery
during the 16th century. Before the mission period, they undoubtedly acquired
it through coastal trade, and small amounts of Timucua St. Johns pottery
are typically found in the Guale region as well.

The gradual movement of the Guale people into St. Augustine for various
reasons connected to Spanish presence and domination, however, introduced
larger numbers of Guale people and larger quantities of Guale San Marcos
ceramics into St. Augustine during the seventeenth century. Guale pottery
was particularly favored by the Spaniards who lived in St. Augustine, who
used it as their principal cooking ware, and this may have inspired local
Native American potters to begin production of San Marcos pottery for sale
to the Spaniards. The native Timucua inhabitants around St. Augustine,
however, continued using their traditional St. Johns pottery, adopting
San Marcos ceramics to in only limited amounts.

The changes and disruptions to American Indian culture in the Southeast
caused by European disease, warfare, trade, evangelization and dominance
are sadly reflected at Nombre de Dios. The population of the mission town
not only decreased over the centuries, but became at the same time much
more diversified as Christian Native Americans refugees from other regions
took refuge in St. Augustine. The story is told not only in the documents
and demographic figures, but also in the archaeological record of Nombre
de Dios.